In general, clear spherical ice pieces have become popular and are used in bourbon, scotch, whiskey, craft cocktails, soft drinks, and other drinks. The clear spherical ice piece is desirable for use in such drinks because of its slow melting rate, large surface area, and attractive visual appearance.
The standard practice currently used to produce spherical ice pieces is to use a manual process which relies on an insulated mold that is manually filled with water, placed in the freezer compartment by the user/consumer, and then when the water is frozen the spherical ice pieces are manually harvested by the user/consumer. However, the insulated mold requires a significant amount of time to freeze the water, thus allowing dissolved solids to precipitate and allow for degasification of the water. While the manual process is adequate to produce spherical ice pieces, it is extremely slow and requires manual input from the user/consumer.
An ice-ball press is also known which is manually filled with ice and then the press forms a single sphere of ice with the help of gravity. Again, the ice-ball press is both time consuming and inefficient.